Protests over fees, cuts disrupt UC board session

12 detained as regents wrestle with shortfall

University of California police at yesterday's board of regents meeting in San Francisco surrounded protesters who refused to disperse. About a dozen of 100 demonstrators were detained. (Paul Chinn / Associated Press)

University of California police at yesterday's board of regents meeting in San Francisco surrounded protesters who refused to disperse. About a dozen of 100 demonstrators were detained. (Paul Chinn / Associated Press)

SAN FRANCISCO — University of California campus police yesterday handcuffed and removed about a dozen demonstrators who interrupted and refused to leave a UC board of regents meeting where officials pushed a plan for steep tuition increases.

The demonstrators were protesting layoffs, furloughs, fee increases and other actions taken by university officials to address the 10-campus system's budget crisis.

“You're incompetent!” David Patida, a UC Santa Cruz student, yelled at UC President Mark Yudof and the regents.

The regents left the meeting room at UC San Francisco when more than 100 protesters stood up and chanted: “Whose university? Our university!” The board members returned after campus police arrested the demonstrators.

The fee-increase request comes on top of unpaid furloughs and thousands of employee layoffs intended to close a budget shortfall of at least $753 million.

Most of the protesters were UC employees, but the people who were detained aren't employed by the university, union organizer Sanjay Garla said.

At the meeting, UC officials presented their plan to raise student fees by more than 30 percent next year to help close a massive budget shortfall caused by rising costs and deep cuts in state funding.

Yudof said the fee increases are needed to maintain the school's place among the nation's top research institutions.

“What we cannot do is surrender to the greatest enemy of the University of California, which is mediocrity,” Yudof said. “The state has stopped building freeways to higher education, and they have started building toll roads.”

The budget plan calls for a midyear fee increase of 15 percent, followed by another 15 percent bump next fall. Undergraduate fees for California residents would rise to $10,302, which doesn't include room, board or campus fees that average $930.

The board of regents is expected to vote on the plan in November.

The arrests capped angry public testimony in which speaker after speaker told Yudof and the regents that raising tuition would make the university too expensive for many students, and that employee furloughs — amounting to pay cuts — are especially unfair for workers earning under $40,000.

Peter Benesch, a senior at UCSD, said in an interview in San Diego that additional fee increases will probably force many students to take out more loans, deepening the financial hole they'll face once they leave school and start jobs — if they can find them.

“What they'll see is reduced opportunities with their lives,” said Benesch, a political science student who plans to go to law school next year. “They'll be focused on how to pay off the debt instead of doing the kinds of things they want to do, or studied to do.”

As the student government's vice president for finances, Benesch said he's familiar with the UC budget process. He placed the blame for the fee increases on the policies of the UC president's office and on “the low priority the state puts on higher education.”

The proposal, which follows a 9.3 percent increase approved in May, would generate an additional $378 million in revenue, of which one-third would be set aside for financial aid.